Hunt for girl, 3, who made 999 call

[essayer]

"Police are desperately trying to trace a three-year-old girl who called the emergency services to say her mother had collapsed and was not moving."

The call was made yesterday morning and still they have not traced who it is

I was surprised she is only 3 from the phone call. Very surprised:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-1906256...

[rohrl]

Lock her up for wasting police time. Bleeding heart liberal lefties ruining this country etc.

[Chrisw666]

I called 999 from my pocket by mistake in January, I was in a wood about 5 miles outside of town and when the operator called me back to check I was ok she had a good idea where I was so how did they not get this information from a 33 minute call?

[RedWhiteMonkey]

My sister in law is a police civilian and spends a lot of her working day liaising with phone companies to locate people (mostly suicide cases and lost kids) by their mobile phone signal. It is entirely possible to track someone by their phone but it does depend on the phone being switched on and it isn’t inch perfect accurate like you see in Hollywood films.

[Sonic]

The company i work for uses triangulation with mobile cells to work out your rough location if GPS is unavailable.

You'll get the rough area of the location, but not an accurate location, like you would with GPS.

[youngsyr]

Sonic said:

The company i work for uses triangulation with mobile cells to work out your rough location if GPS is unavailable.

You'll get the rough area of the location, but not an accurate location, like you would with GPS.

Can you confirm that GPS location cannot work if the phone is located inside (i.e. has a roof/cover above it)?

I recently lost my phone and tried to track it online - I got a position to within 1/2 mile, but no more accurate than that as it was actually in my office at work.

[joewilliams]

youngsyr said:

Can you confirm that GPS location cannot work if the phone is located inside (i.e. has a roof/cover above it)?

I recently lost my phone and tried to track it online - I got a position to within 1/2 mile, but no more accurate than that as it was actually in my office at work.

The GPS receiver needs to have line-of-sight to the satellites to function. If it's inside, it's very unlikely to have that.

Assisted-GPS (using the cell location as well) can help if a degraded GPS signal is available.

[Sonic]

joewilliams said:

youngsyr said:

Can you confirm that GPS location cannot work if the phone is located inside (i.e. has a roof/cover above it)?

I recently lost my phone and tried to track it online - I got a position to within 1/2 mile, but no more accurate than that as it was actually in my office at work.

The GPS receiver needs to have line-of-sight to the satellites to function. If it's inside, it's very unlikely to have that.

Assisted-GPS (using the cell location as well) can help if a degraded GPS signal is available.

^^ This. You can get a fix sometimes, but it takes a long time, and is typically very inaccurate.

Having it next to a window would be fine, having it a couple of meters away next to the coffee machine can render it useless.

[thetapeworm]

Sky News "breaking" - 999 Call That Sparked Hunt In Leeds Was Hoax

[Legend83]

Sky News confirming it was a hoax on Twitter.

[Tiggsy]

Having just listened to the original call....if the bloke that doesnt like Tom Daley gets nicked that nut case needs to get fking stoned to death.

[bigandclever]

West Yorkshire Police have confirmed that the 999 call from 'Ellie' was a hoax. Police believe the call was made by two 10 year old girls living in Bridlington. Officers are current liaising with girls parents to decide what action to take.

[Oakey]

joewilliams said:

The GPS receiver needs to have line-of-sight to the satellites to function. If it's inside, it's very unlikely to have that.

Assisted-GPS (using the cell location as well) can help if a degraded GPS signal is available.

Not so sure, I can use the phone locator service on my Windows Phone account to track the phone down to its exact location, even if it's indoors.

[Mermaid]

essayer said:

"

I was surprised she is only 3 from the phone call. Very surprised:

Didn't the authorities suss that one? Well done essayer

[Tiggsy]

Mermaid said:

essayer said:

"

I was surprised she is only 3 from the phone call. Very surprised:

Didn't the authorities suss that one? Well done essayer

Prob is, if the police ignored it and a dead girl is found with dead mum 6 weeks later "she sounded a bit older" isnt likely to go down well as an excuse.

[mrmr96]

bigandclever said:

West Yorkshire Police have confirmed that the 999 call from 'Ellie' was a hoax. Police believe the call was made by two 10 year old girls living in Bridlington. Officers are current liaising with girls parents to decide what action to take.

If true that's frankly disgusting. I hope they get the book thrown at them.

[essayer]

Reading between the lines the authorities probably knew it was a hoax but just wanted to pin down who it was

[Ayahuasca]

RedWhiteMonkey said:

My sister in law is a police civilian and spends a lot of her working day liaising with phone companies to locate people (mostly suicide cases and lost kids) by their mobile phone signal. It is entirely possible to track someone by their phone but it does depend on the phone being switched on and it isn’t inch perfect accurate like you see in Hollywood films.

It was accurate enough 20 years ago when the US authorities similar technology to pinpoint Pablo Escobar and send in a hit squad.

[bigandclever]

Ayahuasca said:

RedWhiteMonkey said:

My sister in law is a police civilian and spends a lot of her working day liaising with phone companies to locate people (mostly suicide cases and lost kids) by their mobile phone signal. It is entirely possible to track someone by their phone but it does depend on the phone being switched on and it isn’t inch perfect accurate like you see in Hollywood films.

It was accurate enough 20 years ago when the US authorities similar technology to pinpoint Pablo Escobar and send in a hit squad.

I doubt Escobar was using O2. What happened was US special forces were regularly flying over Medellín, monitoring phone calls, and using radio triangulation to locate the phones being used by him and others. Eventually they got lucky when they intercepted a call to his son.

[Jasandjules]

bigandclever said:

West Yorkshire Police have confirmed that the 999 call from 'Ellie' was a hoax. Police believe the call was made by two 10 year old girls living in Bridlington. Officers are current liaising with girls parents to decide what action to take.

Flog them publicly 10 lashes each.